Beneath The Wheel Part 4

Despite these personal interests and experiences, their schoolwork did not receive short shrift. On the contrary, school was rather the main part alongside which Lucius' music, Heilner's poetry and all pacts, transactions and occasional fights played a minor and diversionary role. Especially Hebrew kept all of them on their toes. The peculiar ancient language of Jehovah, an uncouth, withered and yet secretly living tree, took on an alien, gnarled and puzzling form before the boys' eyes, catching their attention through unusual linkages and astonis.h.i.+ng them with remarkably colored and fragrant blossoms. In its branches, hollows and roots lived friendly or gruesome thousand-year-old ghosts: phantastically fearsome dragons, lovely naive girls and wrinkled sages next to handsome boys and calm-eyed girls or quarrelsome women. What had sounded remote and dreamlike in the Lutheran Bible was now lent blood in its true and coa.r.s.e character, as well as a voice and an old, c.u.mbersome but tenacious and ominous life. That at least was the way it appeared to Heilner, who cursed the entire Pentateuch on the hour and still found more life and spirit in it than many a patient drudge who knew the entire vocabulary and p.r.o.nounced everything correctly.

In addition there was the New Testament where everything was more delicate, bright and intimate and whose language, though less ancient and profound and rich, was filled with an eager and imaginative young spirit.

And there was the Odyssey whose vigorously sonorous, measured numbers gave an intimation of a vanished, clearly articulated and joyous life. Next to this the historians Xenophon and Livy disappeared or rather stood, as lesser luminaries, to the side, modest and almost pale in comparison.

With some astonishment Hans discovered how different all things looked to his friend than to him. Nothing was abstract for Heilner, nothing he could not have imagined and colored with his fantasy. When this was impossible he turned away, bored. Mathematics, as far as he was concerned, was a Sphinx charged with deceitful puzzles whose cold malicious gaze transfixed her victims, and he gave the monster a wide berth.

The friends.h.i.+p between the two was an unusual one. For Heilner it was a delightful luxury, a convenience or merely a quirk, whereas Hans cherished it like a proudly guarded treasure, but a treasure that could become a burden. Until recently Hans had always done his homework in the evening. Now Hermann, tired of studying, would come over to his desk, pull away his books and demand his attention. It got so bad that Hans, much as he liked his friend, actually trembled at his coming and would work hurriedly and with redoubled effort during the regularly scheduled study hours. The situation became even more difficult when Heilner began to oppose his industry with theoretical arguments.

"That's hackwork," he would announce. "You're not doing any of this work voluntarily but only because you're afraid of the teachers or of your old man. What do you get from being first or second in cla.s.s? I'm twentieth, and just as smart as any of you grinds."

Hans was equally horrified to discover how Heilner treated his books. One day Hans had left his atlas in the lecture hall and since he wanted to prepare himself for an upcoming geography lesson he borrowed Heilner's. With disgust he noted that entire pages had been dirtied with pencil markings. The west coast of the Iberian peninsula had been reshaped to form a grotesque profile with a nose reaching from Porto to Lisbon, the area around Cape Finisterre stylized into a curly coiffure while Cape St. Vincent formed the nicely twirled point of a beard. It was the same from page to page; the white backs of the maps were covered with caricatures and epigrams, nor was there a lack of ink spots. Hans was in the habit of treating his books like sacred objects, like jewels, and he considered such derring-do as both a sacrilege and a heroic if criminal deed.

At times it seemed as if Hans were merely a convenient plaything for his friend -- let's say a kind of housecat -- and Hans himself felt that occasionally. Yet Heilner was truly attached to him because he needed him. He had to have someone who would listen quietly and eagerly when he delivered his revolutionary speeches about school and life in general. And he also needed someone to console him, someone in whose lap he could rest his head when he was depressed. Like all such people, the young poet suffered from attacks of irrational and slightly coquettish melancholy whose causes were many, having to do with the painful transition from childhood to adolescence, with an excess of premonitions, energy and desires which, however, did not lack a goal, and also with the incomprehensible dark drives of early manhood. He had a pathological need to be pitied and fondled. Before he had come to school he had been his mother's pet and now, as long as he was not ready for womanly love, his accommodating friend had to fulfill the role of comforter.

In the evening he often came deeply depressed to Hans, abducted him from his work and asked him to go with him to the dormitory. There, in the cold hall or in the s.p.a.cious, darkening oratory they walked up and down or sat s.h.i.+vering in an alcove. Heilner then would hold forth with any number of plaintive grievances in the manner of romantic youths who have read Heine and become enraptured with a somewhat childish sorrow. This impressed Hans, though he could not quite understand it, and even infected him on occasions. The sensitive bel esprit was particularly vulnerable to these attacks during inclement weather; his moaning and groaning would reach its apogee usually on evenings when the rain clouds of a late fall evening darkened the sky, with the moon slinking through gloomy rifts. Then he would luxuriate in Ossianic moods and dissolve in melancholy which poured over the innocent Hans in the form of sighs, speeches and verse.

Oppressed and pained by these agonizing scenes, Hans would plunge into his work during the remaining hours, work which became more and more difficult for him. The return of his old headaches did not surprise him particularly; but that he experienced more and more inactive, listless hours and had to force himself to do the most rudimentary things worried him deeply.

He sensed how this friends.h.i.+p exhausted him, how a part of him which had been hale became sick. But the gloomier and more tearful Heilner became, the more Hans pitied him and the tenderer and prouder grew his awareness of being indispensable to his friend.

Of course he also realized that this sickly melancholy was only the ejection of superfluous and unhealthy energies and not really an integral part of Heilner, whom he admired faithfully and genuinely. When his friend recited his poetry or talked about his poetic ideals or delivered impa.s.sioned monologues from Schiller or Shakespeare -- all the while gesturing dramatically -- Hans felt as though Heilner, due to a magic gift he himself lacked, was walking on air, moved about with supernal freedom to disappear from him and the likes of him on winged sandals like a Homeric messenger. The world of the poets had been of little importance to Hans, but now for the first time he let the force of beautiful rhetoric, deceptive images and caressing rhymes flow over him, and his admiration for this new world fused into a single feeling of veneration for his friend.

Meanwhile dark stormy November days came during which you could work at your desk for only a few hours without lamplight, and black nights during which the storm would drive huge tumbling clouds through dark heights and the wind groaned and quarreled around the ancient monastery building. The trees now had lost all their leaves -- with the exception of the gnarled oaks, the royalty of a countryside rich in trees, which still rustled their dead leaves louder and more grumpily than all other trees combined. Heilner was in a sour mood and recently he had preferred not to sit with Hans but to give vent to his feelings on his violin in a remote practice room or to pick fights with his companions.

One evening as he entered the room, he found Lucius practicing before the music stand. Angrily he left. When he returned half an hour later Lucius was still going strong.

"You know it's about time for you to quit," fumed Heilner. "Other people would like to have a chance to practice too. Your unG.o.dly noises are a curse anyway."

Lucius would not budge. Heilner began to lose his temper, and when Lucius resumed his sc.r.a.ping, he kicked over the music stand, the sheet music scattering on the floor, the top of the music stand slamming into Lucius' face. Lucius bent down for the music.

"I'll report you to the headmaster," he said decisively.

"Fine," screamed Heilner, "and you can tell him too that I gave you a kick in the a.s.s." And he was about to step into action.

Lucius fled to the side and made it to the door, his antagonist in hot pursuit, and there ensued a noisy chase through the corridors, halls, across stairways to the remotest part of the monastery where the headmaster resided in calm and dignity. Heilner caught up with the fugitive in front of the headmaster's study just as Lucius had knocked and stood in the open door, so Lucius received the promised kick at the last possible moment and shot like a bomb into the holy of holies.

This was an unheard-of incident. The very next morning the headmaster delivered a brilliant lecture on the subject of the degeneration of youth. Lucius listened with a thoughtful and appreciative expression while Heilner was sentenced to a long period of room arrest.

"Such punishment as this," the headmaster thundered at him, "has not been meted out for years and years. I am going to make very sure that you will remember it for the next ten. You others should regard Heilner as a frightful example."

The entire school glanced shyly at Heilner, who stood there pale and stubborn and looked unblinking directly into the headmaster's eyes. Many admired him in secret. Yet at the end of the lecture, as everyone was noisily filing out, Heilner was left by himself and avoided like a leper. It took courage to stand by him now.

Hans Giebenrath did not stand by him either. It was his duty -- he certainly realized this and suffered from his awareness of his cowardly behavior. Unhappy and ashamed, he hid in an alcove not daring to raise his eyes. He felt the urge to go to his friend and he would have given much if he could have done so without anyone noticing. But someone who has been given as serious a sentence as Heilner might as well be blackballed for the time it takes people to speak to you again. Everyone knows that the culprit will be watched and that it is risky and gives you a bad reputation if you have anything to do with him. The benefits the state bestows on its charges have to have a corresponding measure of sharp and strict discipline. The headmaster had said as much in his first address. Hans was aware of this. And in the struggle between duty to his friend and his ambition, his loyalty succ.u.mbed. It was his ambition to succeed, to pa.s.s his examination with the highest honors, and to play a role in life, but not a romantic or dangerous one. Thus he remained in his corner hideout. There was still time to do the courageous thing, but from moment to moment this became increasingly difficult, and before he had given it any real thought, his inaction had turned into betrayal.

Heilner did not fail to notice it. The pa.s.sionate boy felt how he was being avoided and he understood why, but he had counted on Hans. Compared to the woe and outrage he now felt his former melancholy seemed barren and silly. For just a moment he stopped beside Giebenrath. He looked pale and haughty and softly he said: "You're nothing but a coward, Giebenrath -- go to h.e.l.l." And then he left, whistling softly, his hands stuck in his pants pockets.

Fortunately the boys were kept busy by other thoughts and activities. A few days after this incident it suddenly began to snow. Then there was a stretch of clear frosty weather. You could enjoy s...o...b..ll fights, go ice-skating. Now all of them suddenly realized and discussed the fact that Christmas and their first vacation were imminent. The boys began to pay less attention to Heilner, who went about the school with his head held high, a haughty expression, talking to no one and frequently penning verses in his notebook, a notebook wrapped in black oilcloth which bore the inscription "Songs of a Monk."

h.o.a.rfrost and frozen snow clung to the oaks, alders, beeches and willows in configurations of fantastic delicacy. On the ponds the crystal-clear ice crackled in the frost. The cloister yard looked like a sculpture garden. A festive mood spread through the rooms and the joy of antic.i.p.ating Christmas even lent the two imperturbably correct professors a weak aura of benevolence. No one among the students and teachers remained indifferent to Christmas. Heilner began to look somewhat less grim and miserable, and Lucius tried to decide which books and what pair of shoes to take home with him. The letters the parents sent contained promising intimations: inquiries about favorite wishes, reports of "Bake Day," hints about forthcoming surprises and expressions of gladness about the imminent reunion.

Just before the beginning of the vacation the entire school -- particularly h.e.l.las -- witnessed another amusing incident. The students had decided to invite the teachers to a Christmas soiree in h.e.l.las, the largest of the rooms. One oration, two recitations, a flute solo and a violin duet had been planned. But more than anything else the boys wanted to include a humorous number in their programs. They discussed and negotiated, made and dropped suggestions without being able to agree. Then Karl Hamel casually remarked that the most amusing number might be a violin solo by Lucius. That hit the spot. A combination of promises, threats and imprecations forced the unhappy musician to lend his services. The program, which the teachers received with a polite invitation, listed as a feature attraction: "Silent Night, air for violin, performed by Emile Lucius, chamber virtuoso." The latter appellation was Lucius' reward for his zealous endeavors in the remote music room.

Headmaster, professors, tutors, music teacher and the dean of boys were invited and all came to attend the festivities. The music teacher's forehead broke out in cold sweat when Lucius, groomed and combed and sporting a black suit he had borrowed from Hartner, stepped up to the music stand with a gently smiling modesty. Just the way he clenched his bow was an invitation to laughter, and Silent Night, under his fingers, turned into a gripping lament, a groaning, painful song of suffering. He had to start over twice, ripped and hacked the melody apart, kept the beat with his foot and labored like a lumberjack in winter.

The headmaster nodded cheerfully in the direction of the music teacher, who was ashen with outrage.

When Lucius launched into the third start and got stuck this time too, he lowered his violin, turned to the audience and excused himself: "It just won't go. But I only started to play the violin this fall."

"It's all right, Lucius," said the headmaster, "we are grateful to you for your efforts. Just keep at it. Per aspera ad astra."

Early in the morning of the twenty-fourth of December, the dormitories resounded with noise and activity. A thick layer of finely leafed ice-flowers blossomed on the windowpanes. The water in the washbasin was frozen and a keen wind cut across the cloister yard, but this did not bother anyone. In the dining hall large tureens steamed with coffee, and soon afterward the boys, insulated in thick coats and shawls, wandered in dark clumps across the white fields and through the hushed forest toward the remote railroad station. They were all chattering, joking and laughing loudly, and yet each boy's unexpressed thoughts turned to secret wishes, joys and expectations. Throughout the entire land -- in towns, villages and isolated farmhouses -- they knew that parents and brothers and sisters were expecting them in warm, festively decorated rooms. For most of them this was their first experience of taking a trip home for Christmas and most of them were aware of being awaited with love and pride.

They waited on the bitterly cold platform of the little railroad station in the middle of the forest and at no time had they been as united, tolerant and cheerful as now. Only Heilner remained by himself and silent, and when the train pulled into the station he waited until his fellow students had mounted before he found a compartment where he could be alone. Hans saw him once more as they changed trains at the next station, but his feeling of shame and regret vanished beneath the excitement and joy of the trip home.

There he was met by a satisfied delighted father and a table richly decked with gifts. However, the Giebenrath household could not produce a genuine Christmas atmosphere. There were no Christmas songs, no spontaneous joy in the festivities; there was no mother and no Christmas tree. Giebenrath senior lacked the art of celebrating a feast. But he was proud of his boy and he had not been stingy with presents. And Hans was used to the situation and did not feel that anything was lacking.

People felt that he did not look well, or well fed, and was far too pale and they doubted whether he got enough to eat at the monastery. He denied this emphatically and a.s.sured everyone that he was in good shape except for his frequent headaches. The pastor a.s.sured him in this matter by telling him that he had suffered the same headaches while he was young, and thus all problems were solved.

The river was frozen clear across, and during the holidays it was covered with ice-skaters from morning till night. Hans spent almost every day entirely out of doors wearing a new suit and the green academy cap. He had outgrown his former schoolmates and lived in a much-envied higher realm.

Chapter Four.

It is common knowledge that one or more students will drop out during the course of their four years at the academy. Occasionally one of them will die and be buried while the other students sing hymns, or be taken home with a cortege of friends. At other times a boy will run away or be expelled because of some outrageous misdemeanor. Occasionally -- though rarely, and then only in the senior cla.s.ses -- it happens that a boy in despair will find an escape from his adolescent agonies by drowning or shooting himself.

Hans' cla.s.s, too, was to lose several of its members, and by a strange coincidence it happened that all of them had roomed in h.e.l.las.

One of the occupants of h.e.l.las was a modest, flaxen-haired little fellow named Hindinger, whom they called Hindu. He was the son of a tailor from predominantly Catholic Allgau, and was so quiet that only his departure made people take notice of him, and even then not for long. As the desk-neighbor of the parsimonious Lucius, Hindu had had, in his own friendly and una.s.suming way, a little more to do with him than with the others, but he had had no real friends. Not until they actually missed him did his roommates realize that they were fond of him as a good neighbor who had been undemanding and had represented a calm point in the often excited life of h.e.l.las.

One day in January he joined the ice-skaters who were going out to cavort on the Horsepond. He himself did not own a pair of skates and simply wanted to watch the others. Soon he began to feel the cold and stomped around the edge of the pond trying to keep warm. While doing so he began to run, lost his way, and came upon another little lake which, because of its warmer and stronger springs, had only a thin sheet of ice. As he stepped across it to go through the reeds, the ice broke, small and light though he was. Close to the edge, he struggled and screamed desperately and then sank unseen into the dark coolness.

No one noticed he was missing until the first lesson at two o'clock.

"Where's Hindinger?" the tutor called out.

No one answered.

"Someone go look for him in h.e.l.las."

But he was not to be found there either.

"He must be delayed somewhere. Let's begin the lesson without him. We are on page forty-seven, verse seven. But I insist that there be no repet.i.tion of this sort of thing. You must be punctual."

When the clock struck three and there still was no sign of Hindinger, the tutor became nervous. He sent for the headmaster, who immediately came to the lecture hall and went through a long series of questions. He then dispatched ten students, a proctor and a tutor to search for Hindinger. Those who stayed behind were a.s.signed a written exercise.

Around four o'clock the tutor entered the hall without knocking and began whispering in the headmaster's ear.

"Quiet, everyone," demanded the headmaster. The students sat stock-still in their benches and looked expectantly at him.

"Your friend Hindinger," he went on more softly, "it appears has drowned in one of the ponds. Now you must go help find him. Professor Meyer will lead the way. Your orders are to follow and obey him and to do nothing on your own initiative."

Shocked, whispering among themselves, they got underway with the professor in the lead. A couple of men from town with ropes, boards and wooden poles joined the hurried procession. It was bitter cold and the sun was just about to slip behind the woods.

Just as the small stiff body was recovered and placed on a stretcher in the snow-covered reeds, it became dusk. The students stood in disarray like frightened birds, staring at the corpse and rubbing their stiff, discolored fingers. Not until their drowned comrade was being carried before them on his stretcher were their numb hearts suddenly touched by dread. They smelled death as a deer smells hunters.

Hans Giebenrath found himself walking next to his former friend, the poet Heilner, in that pitiful and freezing little group. They became aware of each other's proximity when they both stumbled over the same unevenness in the field. Perhaps it was the sight of death that overwhelmed and convinced them momentarily of the futility of all selfishness. In any case, when Hans saw his friend's pale face so near, he suddenly felt a deep, inexplicable ache and reached impulsively for his hand. But Heilner drew back at once and cast an offended and angry look to the side. Then he dropped back to the very rear of the procession.

At that point the other boy's heart trembled with woe and shame. As he stumbled on across the frozen wastes, there was nothing Hans could do to keep his tears from trickling down his ice-cold cheeks. He realized that there are certain sins and omissions beyond forgiveness and repentance and it seemed to him that the stretcher bore not the tailor's little son but Heilner, who now took all the pain and anger caused by Hans' faithlessness with him far into another world where people were judged not by their grades and examination marks and scholastic success but solely in accord with the purity or impurity of their consciences.

When they reached the road, they proceeded swiftly to the main monastery, where the entire staff with the headmaster in the lead stood at attention for the dead Hindinger who, if he had been alive, would have quailed at the mere thought of such an honor. The teachers apparently regarded a dead student very differently from a living one. They realized for a fleeting moment how irrecoverable and unique is each life and youth, on whom they perpetrated so much thoughtless harm at other times.

During the evening and all next day, the presence of the una.s.suming corpse continued to exert its spell. It softened, muted and wreathed all activity and talk, so that for a brief time quarrels, anger, noise and laughter were invisible, like wood-nymphs who disappear briefly from a lake, leaving it tranquil and seemingly unpopulated. When two boys discussed their drowned comrade, they now used his full name, for Hindu seemed too undignified for a dead person. The quiet Hindu, who had always been lost in the crowd, now permeated the huge monastery with his name and the fact of his death.

The second day after his death his father came, stayed a few hours in the room where his son lay, was invited to tea by the headmaster, and spent the night in the Stag, a nearby inn.

Then came the burial. The coffin was given a place of honor in the dormitory and the tailor from Allgau stood beside it, watching everything that was being done. He was a tailor from head to toe; skinny and angular, he wore a black dresscoat with a greenish sheen to it, and narrow, skimpy trousers. In his hand he held a shabby top hat. His small thin face looked grieved, sad and weak, like a penny-candle in the wind; he was both embarra.s.sed and overawed by the headmaster and the professors.

At the last moment, just before the pallbearers picked up the coffin, the sorry little man stepped forward once more and touched the coffin lid with timid tenderness. He remained there, helplessly fighting his tears, standing in the large quiet room like a withered tree in the winter -- it was sorrowful to behold how lost and hopeless and at the mercy of the elements he looked. The pastor took him by the hand and stayed at his side. The tailor put on his fantastically curved top hat and was the first to follow the coffin down the steps, across the cloister, through the old gate and across the white countryside toward the low churchyard wall. While singing hymns at the graveside the students annoyed the music-teacher by not watching his hand beating time. Instead they looked at the lonely, wind-blown figure of the little tailor who stood sad and freezing in the snow, listening with bowed head to the pastor's and headmaster's speeches, nodding to the students, and occasionally fis.h.i.+ng with his left hand for a handkerchief in his coat without ever extracting it.

"I could not help imagining my own father standing there like that," Otto Hartner said afterward. Then they all joined in: 'Tes, I thought the same thing."

Later on the headmaster brought Hindinger's father to h.e.l.las. "Was one of you particularly close to the deceased?" the headmaster asked. At first no one volunteered and Hindu's father stared with misery and fear at the young faces. Then Lucius stepped forward and Hindinger took his hand, held it a while but did not know what to say and soon left again with a humble nod of the head. Thereupon he took leave of the monastery altogether. He had to travel a whole long day through the bright winter landscape before he reached his home where he could tell his wife in what sort of place their Karl lay buried.

The spell that death had cast over the monastery was soon broken. The teachers were giving reprimands again, the doors were again being slammed and little thought if any was devoted to the former occupant of h.e.l.las. Several boys had contracted colds while standing around that melancholy pond and lay in the infirmary or ran about in felt slippers with shawls wrapped around their throats. Hans Giebenrath had withstood the ordeal intact in health, but he looked older and more serious since the day of misfortune. Something inside him had changed. The boy had become an adolescent, and his soul seemed to have been transferred to another country, where it fluttered about anxiously, knowing no rest. This change was due not so much to shock or sorrow over Hindu's death but to his having suddenly become aware of what he had done to Heilner.

Heilner lay with two other boys in the infirmary. He had to swallow hot tea, and there was ample time to arrange his impressions of Hindinger's death for possible future use in his poetry. Still, he did not seem overly intent on writing poetry at the moment, for he was languis.h.i.+ng and said hardly a word to his fellow patients. His isolation, a consequence of his prolonged roomarrest, had wounded and embittered his sensitive spirit. He could not go long without communicating his feelings and thoughts. The teachers kept a sharp eye on him as a dissatisfied troublemaker; the students avoided him; the tutors treated him with mocking goodwill, and his friends Shakespeare, Lenau and Schiller showed him a different, mightier and more spectacular world than his present oppressive and humiliating surroundings. His Monk Songs, which at first had struck only a melancholy note of isolation, gradually turned into a collection of bitter and hate-filled verses about the monastery, his teachers and fellow students. He took sour pleasure in his martyrdom, derived satisfaction from being misunderstood, and felt like a young Juvenal with his ruthlessly irreverent monk's verses.

Eight days after the burial, when the two others had recuperated and Heilner was alone in the infirmary, Hans paid him a visit. His greeting sounded timid as he pulled a chair to the bedside and reached for Heilner's hand. Heilner turned morosely toward the wall and seemed quite unapproachable. But Hans refused to be put off. He held on to the hand he had grasped and forced his former friend to look at him. Heilner looked at him with a sneer.

"What are you after anyway?"

Hans did not let his hand go.

"You've got to listen to me," he said. "I was a coward at that time and I let you down. But you know what I'm like: I had made up my mind to stay at the top of the cla.s.s and if possible to graduate at the head of it. You call me a grind; all right, perhaps that's true. But that was my kind of ideal. I just didn't know any better."

Heilner closed his eyes, and Hans continued in a very soft voice: "You see, I am sorry. I don't know whether you want to become my friend again but you have to forgive me."

Heilner said nothing and did not open his eyes. Everything that was good and glad in him wanted to greet his friend with happy laughter; but he had become so used to playing a harsh and lonely role that he kept the appropriate mask on his face a while longer. Hans persisted.

"You absolutely have to, Heilner! I'd rather end up at the bottom of the cla.s.s than have things go on like this. If you want, we can become friends again and show the others that we don't need them."

At that point Heilner returned the pressure of Hans' hand and opened his eyes.

After a few days, he too left the infirmary. The newly fas.h.i.+oned friends.h.i.+p caused considerable excitement in the monastery. The two friends were to experience some very unusual weeks together, weeks during which they did not actually have any significant experiences but were filled with a strangely happy feeling of belonging together and being of one mind. This was different from their old friends.h.i.+p. The long separation had changed both of them. Hans had become gentler, warmer, more enthusiastic; Heilner had grown more vigorous and masculine, and both had missed each other so much that their reunion seemed to them like a great experience and a delicious gift.

Both of these precocious boys shyly, though unconsciously, tasted in their friends.h.i.+p the intimation of the delicate secrets of a first love affair. In addition, their pact had the harsh charm of their growing masculinity and the equally harsh spice of defying the entire student body, whose numerous friends.h.i.+ps were still harmless games. The students disliked Heilner and could not understand Hans.

The more intimate and happier Hans became with his friend, the more alienated he became from school. The new sensation of happiness rushed through his blood and thoughts like young wine, and Livy and Homer lost all importance and attraction by comparison. The teachers watched in horror as their model student turned into a problem child and succ.u.mbed to the bad influence of the dubious Heilner. Teachers dread nothing so much as unusual characteristics in precocious boys during the initial stages of their adolescence. A certain streak of genius makes an ominous impression on them, for there exists a deep gulf between genius and the teaching profession. Anyone with a touch of genius seems to his teachers a freak from the very first. As far as teachers are concerned, they define young geniuses as those who are bad, disrespectful, smoke at fourteen, fall in love at fifteen, can be found at sixteen hanging out in bars, read forbidden books, write scandalous essays, occasionally stare down a teacher in cla.s.s, are marked in the attendance book as rebels, and are budding candidates for room-arrest. A schoolmaster will prefer to have a couple of dumbheads in his cla.s.s than a single genius, and if you regard it objectively, he is of course right. His task is not to produce extravagant intellects but good Latinists, arithmeticians and sober decent folk. The question of who suffers more acutely at the other's hands -- the teacher at the boy's, or vice versa -- who is more of a tyrant, more of a tormentor, and who profanes parts of the other's soul, student or teacher, is something you cannot examine without remembering your own youth in anger and shame. Yet that is not what concerns us here. We have the consolation that among true geniuses the wounds almost always heal. As their personalities develop, they create their art in spite of school. Once dead, and enveloped by the comfortable nimbus of remoteness, they are paraded by the schoolmasters before other generations of students as showpieces and n.o.ble examples. Thus the struggle between rule and spirit repeats itself year after year from school to school. The authorities go to infinite pains to nip the few profound or more valuable intellects in the bud. And time and again the ones who are detested by their teachers and frequently punished, the runaways and those expelled, are the ones who afterwards add to society's treasure. But some -- and who knows how many? -- waste away with quiet obstinacy and finally go under.

According to the good old school precept, as soon as these two strange young boys, Hans and Heilner, came under suspicion, they were treated with redoubled harshness. Only the headmaster, who was proud of Hans as his most zealous student of Hebrew, made an awkward attempt to save him. He invited Hans to his study, the handsome and picturesque belvedere that had been the prior's quarters where, legend has it, Doctor Faustus, who came from the nearby town of Knittlingen, long ago enjoyed his share of Elffinger wine. The headmaster was not a one-sided man, he did not lack insight and practical wisdom, and even possessed a certain measure of goodwill toward his charges whom he liked to call by their first names. His chief failing was a strong streak of vanity, which often let him give in to the temptation of performing little bravura acts on the lectern and did not permit him to suffer to see his own power and authority questioned. He could brook no interference, admit no mistakes. Thus boys who had no wills of their own, and those who were dishonest, got along famously with him. For the same reason, the strong-minded and honest ones had a very hard time of it because the merest hint of disagreement irritated him. He was a virtuoso in the role of fatherly friend with an encouraging look and a deeply moving tone of voice, and it was this role he was playing now.

"Have a seat, Giebenrath," he said in a man-to-man tone, once he had given a vigorous handshake to the boy who had entered so timidly. "I'd like to have a word with you. But I can call you Hans, can't I?"

"Please do, sir."

"You have probably noticed yourself that your work has not been quite up to par in the last few weeks -- at least in Hebrew. Until a short while ago you probably were our best Hebraist, that's why it hurts me to notice such a sudden slackening off. Perhaps Hebrew doesn't give you as much pleasure as it used to?"

"Oh no, but it does, sir."

"Think about it a little! Things like that do happen. Perhaps your interest has switched to another subject?"

"No it hasn't, sir."

"Really not? Well, then we have to look for a cause elsewhere. Couldn't you help me find it?"

"I don't know. . . I've always done my a.s.signments. . ."

"Of course, my boy, of course. But differendum est inter et inter. Naturally you've done your a.s.signments, you didn't have much choice, did you? But you used to accomplish a great deal more than that. You worked harder, or at least you were more interested. And I am asking myself why has your industry lapsed all of a sudden? You aren't sick, are you?"

"No."

"Or do you have headaches? You don't look as well as you sometimes do."

"Yes, I have headaches every so often."

"Is the daily work load too much for you?"

"Oh no, by no means."

"Or are you doing outside reading? Be honest."

"No, sir. I read hardly anything on the side."

"But then I don't quite understand, my dear boy. Something must be wrong somewhere. Will you promise me to make a little more of an effort?"

Hans placed his hand in the outstretched right of the mighty man who regarded him with a benign and serious look.